 | 'Conference notes that scrapping Trident now would release around £1.5 billion annually which could and should be constructively employed in areas of obvious need such as housing education and the health service as well as ensuring the creation of alternative employment and retraining of displaced defence workers.' The Scottish Labour Party Conference delivers a 'slap in the face' to Defence Secretary George Robertson, 6 th March 1998. |  |
THE long black-hulled boat is the stuff of which nightmares are made. It carries enough firepower in its 16 long-range missiles to destroy the world several times over and only the myopic would find any beauty in its sinister fin as the submarine juts through the waters of Loch Long. It cost the taxpayer £12billion to develop, its weapons systems take £400million a year from the defence budget and another £280million is spent annually on its base facilities.
Its name is Vengeance and its natural habit is the ocean's hidden depths. But from this week onwards the Trident-toting submarine will find itself at home in Scottish waters. Whether or not it is a welcome guest is another question.
When the latest of the brood arrives at the Clyde Submarine Base at Faslane she will join the Royal Navy's strategic submarine squadron, whose missiles are capable of destroying Hiroshima several times over. She will be welcomed twice-over too. From the Royal Navy there will be the usual niceties by the Royal Navy's submarine squadron but there will also be protests from those who see her as an unwelcome interloper, a war machine which has no place in a modern Scotland.
This is a weapon which church leaders have described as "sacrilege", a living embodiment of evil and an affront to Scotland's dignity. Ever since the upheaval to the military establishment caused by the last round of cutbacks in the early 1990s the UK defence debate has been strangely dormant. In Scotland, though, it remains a living issue which seems certain to force itself to the centre of the political debate.
The symbolism is all too obvious as you drive north towards Arrochar on the road which plays swings and roundabouts past Garelochhead. On the right there is a motley (though colourful) collection of huts and tents, a caravanserai whose sole purpose is peace and whose pilgrimage is fixed on the all-or-nothing purpose of ridding the world of the nuclear monster. On the left, behind the high walls, barbed wire and chainlink fencing is the bland face of the Clyde Submarine Base, a high-tech military facility whose sole purpose is war making, or, depending on your point of view, maintaining a precarious global peace.
In no other part of Scotland does the paradox of Britain's strategic needs come into tighter focus: the death-dealers on one side, the peaceniks on the other; the sword lined up against the ploughshare. But there is another angle, too. In no other part of Scotland will the country's uneasy partnership with England be subjected to greater scrutiny. Here, on the banks of Loch Long is a sleeping giant which, if provoked, is capable of testing the Union to breaking point.
As things now stand, defence and foreign policy are reserved by Westminster and are expected to play no role in the chamber at Holyrood. Some hope! The exclusion will remove the capacity to take executive action, it might even stifle debate but it will not stop members and their constituents from thinking about the subject and its relevance to their country. It will break into the public consciousness as cleanly as any submarine breaks the surface.
This is not just idle speculation, it is solid fact. As surely as remorse follows excess, defence and foreign policies are central to any debate about Scotland's future. The facts speak for themselves. Recent polls suggest that some 60% of the population want no truck with Trident, the SNP is committed to sending the weapons bag and baggage out of Scotland if they ever come to power in an independent Scotland - and the Scottish Labour Party wants much the same thing. Scratch the surface of party unity and there are few Labour takers for Trident.
There is good evidence, not based on the shaking of bones, that many Scots, perhaps even a majority, do not like Trident and want to have nothing to do with its works. The parliament, of course, will remain powerless. But consider what would happen if there were a crisis involving Scottish-based Trident boats?
It might not be a square-go against another nuclear power; it might just be another of those near-wars which plague our times and which require the short sharp shock of airstrikes. Only this time the government deploys a Trident boat, its D-5 missiles armed with low yield tactical nuclear warheads which can do the job just as easily, and perhaps even more cheaply, than fixed wing aircraft.
Given the opposition to nuclear weapons the parliament might be hard-pushed not to debate the issue. For sure, the orders came from London but the locus would still be Scotland and in no small measure Scots would be involved in the process. The missiles might fall on targets far away, but the submarine would still have to find its way back to Scotland and an uncertain reception.
And it is not just the Trident submarines which give pause for thought. Scotland is such an integral part of British and Nato military planning that if it did not exist it would be difficult to invent it. It houses three strategic airbases at Kinloss, Leuchars and Lossiemouth; its open spaces, not just on the ground but also in the air, are used for training and the country provides six line infantry battalions, a foot guards battalion and an armoured regiment to the British Army's order of battle. These, too, are part of the equation and would have to be taken into account by the parliament. They are still British military assets yet they are still indefinably Scottish: the airbases because they are part of the scenery and the regiments because they are manned by Scots. With their tartans and pipes and their military traditions the regiments say Scotland in a way that few other icons can, but their soldiers are still liable to be killed in action.
The parliament might prefer not to remain silent if, say, the Royal Scots or the Black Watch lost heavy casualties amidst an angry public outcry. Or could it ignore the fact that, in the face of widespread protest, Scottish-based bombers were used in punitive airstrikes?
Although the present government went to great lengths to distance 12 Squadron RAF from any hint of Scottishness when the Lossiemouth-based unit attacked Iraqi targets during last December's Operation Desert Fox, defence minister George Robertson hardly made himself invisible when the aircrew returned to a hero's welcome and a piper playing Scotland the Brave. If the demonstrators were outside the gates it seems most unlikely that the same gesture would be repeated.
Even if scenes like these were never to be played out the very presence of the Clyde base is such an affront to so many people that it cannot but add to the drama. Already there have been loud calls for the base to be closed down and reopened somewhere else, England for preference. Such a scenario is unlikely. Not only would Westminster turn down the idea as intolerably expensive - the base on the Clyde cost £1.9billion and it would take at least three times that amount to reconstruct it elsewhere - but it is also unworkable, as neither Plymouth nor Portsmouth has the room or the infrastructure to support such a move.
The Americans were much more sensible. When they set up house in the Holy Loch they brought most of their own infrastructure with them in the shape of a moored tender, a decision which had more to do with common sense than any cent-pinching in Washington. At the time of the deployment in the 1960s the Americans were far from certain that their British hosts would always be onside, a sensible precaution since it seemed to them that an incoming Labour government would adopt a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament.
For evidence, they did not have far to look. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was in its heyday and well able to make its voice heard. Their supporters were out on the streets, large numbers of the young and the not-so-young who were vitally opposed to nuclear weapons. They were passionate, idealistic and committed, among their number was the foreign secretary Robin Cook, nowadays a senior minister in a government which is committed to the nuclear deterrent.
Then as now his presence is a key to the predicament facing Scotland. For all that the parliament may be forced by public opinion to debate the nuclear issue, it will only be whistling in the wind. Unless, of course, Scotland opts for independence, then a different tune would be heard. If its government was committed to expelling Trident - likely if controlled by the SNP - the new administration would find itself in direct conflict with Westminster.
The consequences would be dire. Such is the complexity of naval operations that an expulsion order delivered to the Faslane headquarters could hardly be acted on immediately. At least one boat would be at sea, the base contains sophisticated electronics and then there is the whole irreducible issue of the nuclear warheads and the boats' power plants. Removal would take years, and as it would cost some £4 billion for England to create another base it is not difficult to imagine the resentment the decision would cause south of the border.
The aggravation could be eased by a leasing arrangement which would allow the Royal Navy to retain the base as a diminishing investment but it would leave long-lasting scars. After 300 years of union there would still be a special relationship between the two countries and England would remain Scotland's main trading partner. All this could be put in jeopardy. Only last month Dr Malcolm Chalmers, a leading analyst at Bradford University, pointed out to a Scottish defence seminar that any decision to close Faslane would "force crippling costs on England, creating resentment and souring relations between states whose peoples have close personal and cultural ties".
The decision might not appeal, too, to the people of Argyll and Dumbarton. Most might not like the submarines squatting on their shoreline but the men and women who run and service the boats bring much-needed spending power into the area. Back in the 1980s the commander of the submarine base silenced doubting trade union leaders by providing evidence of his squadron's spending power. It was in the region of £100 million a year. Did they really want to forfeit that in exchange for their unilateral opposition? The answer was, apparently, no.
And that is the main problem facing the defence debate in Scotland. From a moral perspective there is much opposition to the presence of weapons of mass destruction and to the country's role in Britain's strategic obligations. On the other hand it cannot be denied that the creation of ploughshares will never be achieved without financial penalties affecting many hundreds of working people. Given that conflict of interests, defence is a matter which cries out for debate.
At present all of the serious talking has taken place at Westminster and, under the terms of the Scotland Act, that is how things will proceed. This is both a position and a challenge. As the parliament will soon discover, defence cannot be compartmentalised; it intrudes into too many parts of our lives for that. The economic policy committee might wish to question the impact on Scotland of Westminster-ordained defence cuts, the environment committee will have things to say on low-flying and the effect on health of so much nuclear hardware.
Like the four black-hulled boats on the west coast, defence is an issue which is on our doorstep. Like them, too, it is unlikely to go away without the devil of a debate.
Feb 21 1999
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